I'm sure this is a really stupid question, but I thought I'd give it a try anyhow.

I finally took the plunge and reformatted my laptop hard drive and set up partitions to dual boot, with a single fat32 "data" partition. I haven't installed the Linux part yet (trying to decide between Fedora Core and Ubuntu) but I am setting up the Windows system to be more organized than it was before.

After trying out FileHamster (mentioned in this thread http://www.donationc...ex.php?topic=10212.0) and having a look at Tortoise SVN, I am starting to think that a more "proper" version control system would be a good idea. Syncing and so on proved to be a pain in the butt, and because I tend to generate scads of changes in my PhD documents (in Word, LaTeX, Access, OOo, GRASS GIS, GIMP, etc, etc, etc...) I can easily get lost in the changes. This has led me to screw up at least one important document in my file cleanup frenzy before I reformatted the hard drive.

So, the dumb question is this: can I set up a Subversion system on my laptop to track changes that can be accessed by either Linux or XP? It's not entirely clear to me whether both systems can understand changes made in a single set of documents. Does anyone have a good solution for keeping one set of data files and using either operating system to modify them?

You can store the documents on a subversion server not on your computer. For example, get a Dreamhost account and use the subversion server that comes with it. Another option is to make the data partition FAT32 and create the repo as a file-based repo (not DB-based) and both Linux and Windows svn clients should handle it just fine.

The only ones I have heard of problems with are MS proprietary formats (so probably would affect you) but back in the days of Office 2000 I read reports of file corruption when using the SAME (!!!) version of Office applications on different systems,

I can't imagine why that should happen but if you are editing the same file with different tools under different OSes there may be issues unless they are totally generic formats (such as JPEG).

FWIW I would mostly be working with LaTeX/text files and/or OpenOffice when I want to switch between systems. One of the main reasons why I wanted to dual boot was that the GIS programs (GRASS in particular) seem to be a lot easier to use in Linux, their native system; various ports exist but I always had trouble with them.

tinjaw, I installed Tortoise SVN (in windows) and just created the repository in whatever the native format is, on the fat32 partition. What do you use to access the repository? I still haven't tried it in Linux yet.

Mandork: if you use a local FSFS (as opposed to Berkely-DB based) repository on the FAT32 partition, you should be able to access it both from windows and linux. Iirc FSFS repositories have been the default for a while, so you should be ready to go. I dunno what the easy-to-use-gui options are for subversion on linux, but the command-line tools work just fine

wilfrednilsen: unless you tunnel subversion through SSH or SSL, it's not particularly secure by default... if you use svnserve, passwords are sent plain-text. And older versions have had security holes, which is probably how the hackers got through to donationcoder.com , by the way.

Oh, and what's with the "windogs" thing? wouldn't you think it got pretty old pretty fast if people consistently wrote "linsux" or "lunix"?

The only ones I have heard of problems with are MS proprietary formats (so probably would affect you) but back in the days of Office 2000 I read reports of file corruption when using the SAME (!!!) version of Office applications on different systems,

I can't imagine why that should happen but if you are editing the same file with different tools under different OSes there may be issues unless they are totally generic formats (such as JPEG).

You can store the documents on a subversion server not on your computer. For example, get a Dreamhost account and use the subversion server that comes with it. Another option is to make the data partition FAT32 and create the repo as a file-based repo (not DB-based) and both Linux and Windows svn clients should handle it just fine.

Maybe I'm missing something (quite possible) , but filesystem compatibility shouldn't be an issue anyways with ntfs-3g (usually installed by default on todays Linux systems) or ext2ifs that's very easy to set up on windows. I'd recommend using NTFS though, as I trust ntfs-3g more than ext2ifs (especially for the newer ext3 fs R/W)

Hm, ntfs-3g does state it's stable for both read and write - I guess a lot of users are still a bit skeptic because of all the nasty problems it's had in the past, though . The performance charts are also interesting - ntfs-3g scores pretty damn bad there, I'd like to know how the native driver by Microsoft performs... and by golly XFS scores low for "metadata" operations - I wonder if they tested ext3 without journalling, since it scores so high?

1000s of people are using ntfs-3g right now, without any problems. As for Performance, yes, I'm sure there's room for improvement, but it'S already pretty damn good AFAIC -- also check the CPU column. But one can expect some performance gain in the near future since they clearly state that "ntfs-3g is NOT optimized yet".

If you store the documents on a separate server (for example on a Dreamhosted subversion server or your own separate server) you have the advantage of getting at the documents from any computer with a network connection to that box. You also don't have to worry about accidentally deleting the repos as you are messing with partitioning and all that jazz.

I actually use a third option myself. I use a Dreamhosted subversion repository and run a local mirror on my laptop via svk.

Maybe I'm missing something (quite possible) , but filesystem compatibility shouldn't be an issue anyways with ntfs-3g (usually installed by default on todays Linux systems) or ext2ifs that's very easy to set up on windows. I'd recommend using NTFS though, as I trust ntfs-3g more than ext2ifs (especially for the newer ext3 fs R/W)

I was looking at it strictly from a simplicity POV. With FAT32 there is no need for special drivers and the partition would be accessible even via a LiveCD. If you are willing to accept the additional work and don't need universal access, then any of your suggested solutions would work just fine.

Btw., I'd definitely recommend putting the repository on a server - saves you grief if you harddrive crashes on the development machine (yeah yeah, backups etc., but a server means additional protection). It's also nice being able to access code from wherever, even if I don't use that feature that often (once I get a laptop, though...)

BeanStalk looks pretty cute and not toooo expensive, but I guess you do pay for peace of mind and simplicity - considering you could get a dreamhost (or whatever) account and set up stuff yourself...